Return to Innocence
by Unholy Typhoon
Summary: Matt's father hates him, Tai loves him, and Matt can't protect himself from his father when Tai isn't with him. Rated R for character abuse, yaoi, and angst.


Return to Innocence

Return to Innocence

A/N: After much soul-searching, I've decided to take up the pen again, albeit the pen was a rather dark one this time. This fic has Taito, angst, and a very twisted version of Matt's father. Read at your own risk. Also, this is a songfic, using Enigma's "Return to Innocence". 

__

Love – Devotion

Matt sighed and let his mind wander to thoughts of Tai, his love. When Tai had finally broken down and confessed it to him, Matt thought that he was going to burst with all the emotions running through him. He'd never been happier than in that single moment, and everything else in the world ceased to exist, except for him and Tai. 

__

Feeling – Emotion

That night, they had proved their love for each other, and for Matt, the feeling of the purely sublime experience was indescribable. But then, just as all good things must come to an end, Tai had to leave, promises to return quickly falling from his lips before he was out the door. That was when his father got home. That was when Matt needed Tai the most. 

__

Don't be afraid to be weak

Don't be too proud to be strong

Matt needed Tai's strength then, because alone, he was too weak to do anything to protect himself. Because alone, his weakness was taken advantage of. Because alone, his father could do things, terrible things, and Matt couldn't stop him. And it was now that his father began. First it was the terrible feeling of his hands all over Matt's body, his father's hands in places he now wanted only Tai's hands to be. Then the hands became rougher. Matt soon gave up and stopped struggling. Finally the hands became violent, beating on Matt with insane abandon that no notion of fatherly love stopped or slowed. 

__

Just look into your heart my friend

Matt had thought that his heart was closed off forever, an impenetrable wall, sealed with the mortar known as hate, and built by the bricks of inconceivable pain. He thought that by sealing off his heart, he couldn't be hurt anymore. Not by his father, not by his own self-loathing, not by anyone. 

__

And that will be the return to yourself

The Return to Innocence

Matt thought that his innocence was lost forever. Then Tai had shown him that he could give Matt his lost purity back, that Tai could show him the path back to himself, and inside, Matt could return to innocence. 

__

If you want, then start to laugh

If you must, then start to cry

Tai's careful ministrations had given him so much reason to laugh, to return to the carefree and happy life he had once known. But all Matt knew how to do any more was cry. But then, he had felt himself slowly fill up with a warmness that had no foundation, and it made him feel better that he'd ever felt before.

__

Be yourself, don't hide

Just believe in Destiny

Matt had finally understood what that warmness was, that indescribable happiness welling up inside him for no reason. Just as Tai had loved him, Matt realized that he loved Tai just as much. What was filling him up was love. Matt was scared, however. He didn't know what would happen if he or Tai told anyone else, or told his father. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter. As long as Tai stayed with him, he could do anything, and he wouldn't give up any longer.

__

— Several months later — 

__

Don't care what people say

Just follow your own way

Don't give up, use the chance

To return to innocence

Matt now lived with Tai, his happiness restored, his father gone from his life forever. He and Tai had told everyone about them, and almost everyone accepted it for what it was — love. He and Tai didn't care about those who wouldn't accept it, they were following their own destiny, and perfectly happy to walk down the path that they'd chosen together. Matt now realized that when he had thought that the end of his happiness, and the loss of everything in him that was pure seemed inevitable, Tai had come back into his life, and shown him that it was just the beginning of something new, something that he was now living, and something that he could never have imagined happening without Tai. 

__

That's not the beginning of the end

That's the return to yourself

The return to innocence

~~_Owari~~_


End file.
